Don Bosco founded the Salesians of Don Bosco with the aim of reaching out to vulnerable youth. Across the globe today, the vulnerable youth take different avatars: youth who are victims of abject poverty, rural marginalised youth, child labourers, those in conflict with the law (juvenile delinquents), street children, and refugees.
Supporting street children
In Kenya, DBDON supports the work of Salesians of Don Bosco in Kuwinda, Nairobi, reaching out to street boys. This project provides three phases of reach-out: street contact for recruitment (at Kariua), followed by rehabilitation-reintegration (at Langata), and education (at Kuwinda and beyond).
A work for street children, that started in 1991 has supported over 3000 boys and girls, some of whom today are technicians, businessmen, teachers, project managers, engineers, and medical doctors. There are currently 450 and approximately 100 out-of-residence scholarship beneficiaries.
Empowering refugees
DBDON also supports the work of the Salesians in Kakuma refugee camp in Turkana. The camp has over 250,000 residents. We run 7 training centres with various trades; one of these are targeted towards the youth from the hosting community of the Turkana. The project that was launched in 1993, has helped thousands of refugees who have now repatriated to their own country of origin or other countries.
Our current enrolment rate at all our centres exceeds 2500. We focus on TVET, agriculture, women empowerment, ICT and language training. At our agricultural training unit, we empower young refugee boys and girls so that when they are back in their countries, they will be able to use their natural resources.
Scholarship programmes
We run various scholarship programmes. The Don Bosco Kenya Scholarship programme has been made sustainable on account of the legacy left by one generous donor. Through this programme we reach out to over 100 learners every year, who are within our schools and those attached to our parishes and youth centres.
